A dad’s legacy: Warriors’ Kerr guided by father’s example

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Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr stands on the sidelines as the team players are announced before the start of their game against Los Angeles Lakers at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

The family of Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr in a contrbuted photo made in the mid-1970s at their home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., from left to right: Steve, Andrew, mother Ann, dog Hoagie, father Malcolm, John and Susan. (Courtesy of Ann Kerr)

OAKLAND — Steve Kerr played with some of the NBA’s greatest players and for several of its greatest coaches. But the man most responsible for Kerr’s success as the Warriors’ first-year coach was an understated Middle East scholar who enjoyed curing olives and had little interest in professional basketball.

“I’m grateful I had him for 18 years,” Kerr said recently in a rare interview about his father. “I feel his full impact on my whole life. It’s there every day.”

Malcolm Kerr was assassinated in the winter of 1984, gunned down by Islamic terrorists at the American University of Beirut.

His athletic endeavors extended no further than shooting hoops with his kids in the driveway, but the upbringing Malcolm and his wife, Ann, provided would infuse Kerr with a worldly perspective and ability to adapt to anyone and any situation.

Before he learned the game from Hall of Fame coaches like Phil Jackson, Kerr learned German in a French elementary school.

Before he caught a pass from Michael Jordan and hit the shot to win the NBA title, Kerr attended a backyard barbecue with Egyptian royalty.

Before he set foot in a Warriors locker room that was reeling from the departure of his popular predecessor, Kerr spent years navigating his way around Cairo.

“My life has been set up by childhood stability and incredibly interesting experiences,” said Kerr, the third of four children. “That’s helped me as a player and a coach. I have a much better understanding of people.”

That skill has proved invaluable for the rookie coach of a young team one step from the NBA Finals.

***

There were two bullets.

Fired from silencer-equipped revolvers on the morning of Jan. 18, 1984, they struck Malcolm Kerr in the back of the head in the hallway outside his office. The 52-year-old president of the American University of Beirut, who had accepted his dream job 16 months earlier, crumpled to the floor.

A group calling itself the Islamic Holy War, which opposed American presence in Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the assassination, according to the New York Times.

Half a world away, just after midnight, the phone rang in Kerr’s freshman dorm room at the University of Arizona. A family friend relayed the unthinkable news. Kerr hung up, then ran into the streets of Tucson.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said.

Separated from family, his world crashing down, Kerr realized there was one thing he could do: Play basketball. So the next day, he practiced. The day after that, he played.

Kerr wept through a moment of silence for his father prior to tipoff against archrival Arizona State. Then he came off the bench and made his first shot. Cheers, tears … bedlam.

He became Tucson’s adopted son that day, but the game that defined his college career came four years later and 100 miles up the road in Tempe.

As Kerr warmed up on the court 30 minutes before tipoff, a small group of Arizona State students positioned themselves nearby and began their barbaric chant:

“P.L.O.!”

“P.L.O.!”

“Where’s your dad?”

Trembling, Kerr dropped the ball and staggered to the Arizona bench. Tears welled in his eyes.

“I will never, ever forget that,” said KNBR host Tom Tolbert, who played with Kerr for two years at Arizona and remains a close friend. “It was the only time I’ve seen him break down.

“I couldn’t believe the words coming out of their mouths. I went to the locker room because if I didn’t, I would have gone into the stands.”

In the blowout victory that followed, Kerr drained six 3-pointers.

In the first half.

***

The Kerrs arrived in the Middle East in 1919, when Stanley and Elsa — Steve’s grandparents — joined relief efforts in the wake of the Armenian Genocide. They eventually moved to Beirut and joined the faculty at the American University, where Malcolm was born, raised and would meet his future wife.

Ann Zwicker arrived in Beirut in 1954. A student at Occidental College, she crossed the Atlantic in 17 days aboard a Dutch freighter, then settled in for her junior year at the American University. She had four Arab roommates, immersed herself in Ottoman history and, within a month, had met Malcolm.

They were married in Santa Monica in 1956 and began a life together than would crisscross the continents in the name of academia and adventure.

Pacific Palisades became the family’s home base after Malcolm joined UCLA’s political science department, but they returned frequently to the Middle East. (He would become the leading Western authority on Lebanon.)

Kerr was born in the hospital at the American University and spent his toddler years in Beirut before the family returned to Southern California. They packed up again in the early 1970s — Malcolm was on sabbatical — and set their sights on Tunisia and France. Kerr attended kindergarten in Provence.

“The first day I was there, I had to go to the bathroom,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how to ask in French, so I peed my pants.

“I went to the office, and they put me in checkered slacks.”

Not long after, a teacher mentioned to Ann that little “Stephon” was making great progress with his German.

German?

“We thought he was learning French,” Ann said. “So he came home and we asked him to count to 10. Sure enough, it was eins, zwei, drei.”

The family returned to Los Angeles and Kerr’s passion for sports blossomed. He became a ball boy for the UCLA basketball team and attended Dodgers games, often arriving early enough to chase batting practice home runs. One-on-one basketball in the driveway with his brother John, older by four years, usually ended with Kerr losing the game and his cool, unable to channel his hypercompetitiveness.

“Oh, I had a horrible temper,” Kerr said. “If I didn’t get a hit, or missed a shot, I’d throw these huge tantrums. But my dad would never grab me right away. He was patient. He’d wait until I calmed down to talk to me.

When he wasn’t playing with his four kids, Malcolm Kerr worked. He’d come home and head into his study to read or write. Family dinners often included faculty friends from UCLA or guests from the Middle East.

During a backyard barbecue with Queen Farida of Egypt, Kerr’s older sister, Susan, acted on a dare and asked, “Would you like another meatball, your royal highness?”

The lifestyle helped foster curiosity in the Kerr children.

John has a doctorate in applied economics from Stanford and is a professor at Michigan State.

Susan earned her doctorate in education from Harvard and is a politician in England.

Andrew, the youngest, followed Steve at Arizona, worked for the National Security Council, then got his MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management and works in the construction business.

“I joke with Steve that he’s the dumbest one in the family,” said Bruce Fraser, a Warriors player development coach and one of Kerr’s closest friends. “He’s the least educated but the most wealthy.”

Ann, who coordinates the Fulbright scholar program at UCLA, describes it this way: “I have two Ph.D.s, one MBA and one NBA.”

The family returned to the Middle East in 1977, when Malcolm became a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo. Kerr attended junior high school and one year of high school in the ancient city, learning halting Arabic and forging friendships with kids from all over the world.

He wasn’t happy about being removed from the American “basketball track,” as Ann described it, but the experience left a lasting impression.

“You have to learn to fit in when you’re the outsider, and that gives you more understanding when someone else is the outsider,” John Kerr said. “Steve is totally comfortable with what he doesn’t know.”

***

Kerr, 49, spoke at length about his childhood during a recent interview and credits both parents, working in concert across continents, to provide “everything I needed.” But in personality, Kerr said, he is wired like his father: Reserved but passionate (the father about Lebanon, the son about basketball), thoughtful but possessing a razor wit.

Kerr’s memories remain vivid all these years later, and he rattled them off: There is Malcolm, reading The New Yorker in the stands at Dodger Stadium. There is Malcolm, coming home from the office and making popcorn. There is Malcolm, emerging from his study to shoot baskets in the driveway.

And there is Malcolm, patiently waiting for his enraged son to settle down.

“He set such a good example,” said Kerr, who has three children. “I’ve tried to be the same way with my kids.”

The lessons imparted at home and the experiences gained overseas — “They all got thrown into bathwater and survived,” Ann said — combined to shape Kerr’s worldview, foster a sense of empathy and sharpen his interpersonal skills.

Those same skills would help carry him through a 15-year NBA career — a second-round draft pick, he won five NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs — and ease his transition to coaching.

“I developed a lot of compassion living in Egypt, seeing the poverty,” he said. “The discussions around the dinner table about world politics and understanding how fortunate we were — all that helped me gain perspective on life.

“That helped with teammates when I was a player and now as a coach.”

Early in his acceptance speech for being named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, guard Stephen Curry thanked Kerr for not letting the Warriors get complacent and noted, “You’re very humble in the way you’ve approached this season.”

Kerr’s first move spoke volumes: He assembled a first-class coaching staff, with lieutenants (Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams) who were better versed than him in critical aspects of the game.

He never felt threatened by the players’ fondness for former coach Mark Jackson and allowed them to keep several traditions from the Jackson era.

Jon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP top-25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree.